to wish that people would stop...

[Fuckmyliferightnow]

Saying that getting cancer is 'karma'.

I've read several threads recently where some not very nice people have been diagnosed or suspect they have cancer, cue the onslaught of people claiming that it's karma.

I'm 45 and have had cancer twice.
I must be a terrible person!!

I wish people would think before posting comments like this, it's so damaging.

Nice people get cancer too

Hmm I would say that this is very rare, I think many people know more nice people that have cancer and think cancer is non-discriminatory in who has it. I think because you have personal experience, the bad comments stick out to you although they’re in the minority

The Hindu belief in karma is much more complex and nuanced than the "ha-gotcha" kind of idea that casual posters mean when they use the term. I haven't got time to go into it now but it really isn't the same..more about the way your soul recycles through to a different level of existence next time round, not individual events.

As my mum was one of loveliest people who died from cancer, people who say this are full of crap.

There is no such thing as karma anyhow.

Whilst we are on the topic of insensitive cancer comments, can we add any reference to someone's 'fight' and the thought that someone survives this dreadful illness because they fought hard enough.

Sorry for what you've been through OP and that you've been upset by these comments. I think people find it comforting to think that bad individuals eventually get bad things happen to them and vice versa. It appeals to our sense of fairness that they don't just 'get away with' the things they have done. But the reality is that many 'bad people' live comfortable lives and many 'good people' live through unimaginable hardship. That's a difficult concept to accept when our morals and societies and religions teach us that we should be good people but there seems sometimes to be little obvious reward in it.

When something bad happens to a 'bad person' it can be comforting to try to link them together in the name of karma because we want there to be bad consequences for bad people, but ultimately cancer isn't a consequence or a punishment or an act of karma, it's just something that happens. It doesn't discriminate on your morals or actions, it's equally hideous for those who have lived good lives and those who have lived bad lives. And of course just like comments about fighting hard enough to beat cancer, there are very hurtful insinuations that people don't consider when they say these things. I think deep down people aren't trying to be hurtful, they're just trying to make sense of a very unfair world but i can completely understand why you'd be upset.

that’s horrible to say. I personally have more of an issue with this rhetoric that someone can ‘fight’ cancer it’s so bizarre - no one says that about other illnesses. It suggests the person with cancer is able to control it, and implies they failed if they don’t recover

They don't mean it generally, OP.

When people say stuff like that, they are thinking about the person they are saying it about specifically. It's not true but if they are upset with the person, or the person has been awful to them, its part of their coping mechanism for dealing with that person and their feelings towards that person. They're not applying it wholesale to everyone who is in a similar position.

Exactly, they'll get their karma 😊

Gabor Mate says cancer is a disease of the nice.

@Mothership4two yes as if the patient doesn't feel bad enough.

@HardWorkAndLove I do understand how you feel I'm sorry.

@Fuckmyliferightnow

im sorry to hear you have had cancer twice.

MN is an unmoderated site & can only delete comments if they're reported, so anything someone finds offensive needs reporting and MNHQ will decide if it is or isn't..

I'm a big believer in karma, that's why whenever anything bad and unfair happens to me I always go out and push a child over just to even the score. 😉

@VeniVidiWeeWee I think it's fine to say 'I don't believe in karma'.

@sugarplum33 you're right! Although it didn't upset as much as it could have, I'm just irritated by people's ignorance.
Cancer doesn't discriminate and it is hard to get your head around, when I had it all I could think was 'why me?'.

@Peony654 I think mostly people don't know what to say, it's like people are scared to talk to/about someone with cancer that they just say what they think sounds good.

@Threenow It's also a very negative dialogue to live with, I'd much rather try and keep thing's positive for my own sanity.

@GreyCarpet I'm sure you're right, cancer sufferers just don't need to read things like this as they're already in a pretty bad place. I know what you're saying though.

@NeedTheSeaside thank you.

@Oysterbabe

It's also a very negative dialogue to live with, I'd much rather try and keep thing's positive for my own sanity.

Being abused is a negative thing. Being told I’m the ‘lowest of the low’ for wishing bad on a child abuser, MY abuser, implying I’m worse than him, is pretty fucking negative dialogue!

I am positive, I wouldn’t be here now if I wasn’t positive about life. BUT, I can still have a place in my life for hoping the ‘father’ who abused me and made me feel suicidal and desperate for so long, suffers in the worst way possible.

A lot of the language around cancer I find problematic. Fighting, battling, lost/won the battle...

There's a book by a woman called Barbara Ehrenreich about the whole toxic positivity industry called Smile or Die which has a big section on the erroneous idea of positive thinking in cancer and how badly this has misled people, and I think this is an offshoot of this.

I think at its most basic level helping people with cancer feel optimistic is probably not a bad thing but if taken to its logical conclusion the output is that you are somehow in control of your cancer because you don't "believe" hard enough (and, by implication, that if your cancer becomes worse it's your fault). Focusing on mental health is not a bad thing but this has become bound up with all sorts of hippy woo about the idea that you can will the cancer away and in my view it's very dangerous and misleading to overemphasise this "power of positivity" thing.

Feeling positive will help you to the extent that it will support your mental health which may support your physical health at the margins. But believing that cancer is something people wish for (or don't wish for) is profoundly stupid.

And anyone who thinks cancer is "karma" is a moron. There's no other word for it.

Thanks for deleting that post @MNHQ. Proof that they do delete offensive shit that clueless ignorant people spout.

All the best OP. 💐

Except the karma people post about on MN isn't the karma of Hinduism. People have changed what it actually means to the point you can't really link it to that religion.

I think it depends. I’ve lost a much loved dad, grandma and uncles to cancer, at quite young ages, but if someone in grief wished cancer on someone who harmed them then I wouldn’t judge them but I’d encourage them not to think like that.

I have a friend who wished cancer on her husband when he had an affair. At the time I just let her vent and didn’t take it seriously.

But then he died of cancer within months and she felt terrible, I did reassure her she didn’t curse him but it doesn’t help.

@CherryMaDeara that was unfortunate

I had a former friend who I already suspected of being very narcisstic.

She absolutely insisted on coming to my chemotherapy session and I was already quite upset due to the fact that I was, you know, a stage four cancer patient with two young kids.

She then proceeded to tell me that she couldn't deal with my negavity; it was affecting her health because she was an "empath" and she absorbed too many of my negative feelings.

She then said that she believed hugely in karma. She said that karma was the reason she believed she'd just won a shed load of money (over £100k). She then continued to say that she believed that bad things like illnesses happened to people because of the same karma.....

And she let her sentence tail off meaningfully.

It was not the only massively bitchy thing she said and did that day.

When she left the nurse who had heard the whole thing told me in no uncertain terms that this friend was actually no friend at all.

The friend then refused to speak to me for the next six weeks; blanked me, shut the door in my face etc.

Then came crawling back wanting my friendship (because her attempts to befriend and love bomb another prospective friend apparently didn't work out).

She then apparently got very upset why I didn't want to talk to her anymore.

She still tells people she "did everything" for me as a cancer patient and that she has no idea why I stopped speaking to her.

It was for a myriad of narcissistic tendencies she displayed but the karma thing sticks in my head.

As a result I hate it when people say they believe in karma because what they're actually saying therefore is that I deserved to get stage four cancer at the age of 39.

@stuckonagroundedplane I'm sorry that happened to you.
I have my share of experiences with narc types and they enjoy hurting people.
You are infinitely better off without her.
Sending hugs to you